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Research

Back to the Renaissance? A New Perspective on America's Cities

Joel Kotkin

September 1997

CREATIVITY AND THE FUTURE OF CITIES

The greatest competitive advantage of cities, both in the past and today, lies in
this creative edge. As cultural, technical, and social concepts collided on the urban
stage of meeting houses and marketplaces, cities gave birth to writing, the evolution
of art, abstract concepts, and mathematics, thus giving the city a predominant role
in the development of world culture. Imperial Rome absorbed from traveling Greeks
and Egyptians much of their cultural and technical legacy upon which it built its
own brilliant civilization. Similarly, the great trading and artisan cities of the
Renaissance such as Florence and Venice are now remembered not chiefly for their business
success, but for their enduring legacies of art, literature, and architecture legacies
that flowered during the era of their effervescent commercial growth. Since antiquity,
notes Mumford,

The city was primarily a storehouse, a conservator, an accumulator. It was by its
command of these functions that the city served its ultimate function, that of transformer.
Through its municipal utilities the kinetic energies of the community were channeled
into storable symbolic forms.

In the nineteenth century, the infant American culture was nurtured largely by European
immigrants who provided much of the creative spark. Although Paris remained the center
of the avant-garde, eventually New York emerged as a powerful global artistic center
of its own, with more than 20,000 working artists by 1925. Ultimately the mass migration
of artists, scientists, and writers during the rise of European fascism all but guaranteed
the emergence of New York and later Los Angeles as dominant global cultural centers.

The migration of European painters and sculptors to New York, for example, established
the American city as the center of modern art and literature, supplanting long dominant
Paris and other European cities. The "Europeanizing of American culture," as Laura
Fermi puts it, also ended the hegemony of Europe over even its own cultural heritage,
much as Alexandria replaced Athens as the center of Hellenistic culture in classical
times.

Similarly, historian Kevin Starr has noted, the migration of German film-makers, actors,
and craftspeople such as Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, Peter Lorre, Max Reinhardt,
and Marlene Dietrich fixed Southern California as the epicenter of the global film
industry. So pervasive was the Berliner influence that at one Hollywood party, Otto
Preminger, another of the émigrés, was shocked to find some of the guests chattering
away in Hungarian. "Don't you guys know we're in Hollywood?" the director asked. "Speak
German."

Even today, after decades of relative decline in urban economies, these same cities
still dominate centers of global cultural life. Although many middle class people
may have fled the cities, most of the creative community has remained, with New York
and Los Angeles alone accounting for roughly 14 percent of the nation's artists. The
cultural dynamism of these great cities—reflected in their ethnic diversity, eclectic
restaurants, and bustling neighborhood life—continue to attract the educated younger
people who are critical to the life of most creative fields. A 1992 Louis Harris survey
of migration into New York, for example, found that newcomers ranked cultural amenities
as one of the city's primary attractions.

The most powerful economic effect of these concentrations derive from the dramatic
arts. From the temple-grounds of Egypt and Sumer to the institutionalization of formal
theater in the Greek polis, theatrical performances thrilled city-dwellers and lured
visitors from the hinterlands. Even today, the theater districts of New York and London
attract millions of tourists who might otherwise stay at home. In 1994 alone, according
to the state controller's office, the combined culture-based industries of New York—film,
museums, and theater—added 12,000 jobs to the city's economy.

Despite repeated attempts by lower-cost states and counties to lure film and television
production, the vast majority of the filmed entertainment industry also remains firmly
ensconced in urban areas—primarily in Los Angeles, but also in such urban centers
as Chicago, New York, and Miami. Southern California by itself accounts for more than
82 percent of all prime time television shows, with New York the center for an additional
nine percent.

The persistent concentration of culture-based industries in cities stems largely from
the dense concentrations of artists and skilled craftspeople. In Los Angeles, there
are more than 4400 motion picture related service establishments and nearly 100,000
freelance workers. This unique constellation of people and companies cannot be easily
reduplicated, as can the mass manufacturing or even conventional office economies,
within the friendly confines of an "edge city" or small town environment.

The long-term future potential of these creative urban centers may be best exemplified
in the field of multimedia, where the computer, entertainment, and information industries
are now rapidly converging. By the logic of George Gilder and other futurists, such
cutting edge industries—virtual reality, web-site development, internet-related technology,
digital imaging, and computerized animation—should be clustering either in the emerging
high-tech "edge cities" or in the bucolic Valhallas.

However, instead of locating in Irvine, Princeton, Santa Clara, Santa Fe, or Boise,
the multimedia industry appears to be clustering in more dense, urban neighborhoods.
Although this nascent industry is exceedingly hard to monitor, most studies indicate
that three cities—Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco—boast by far its largest
concentrations. This new industry, which barely existed a decade ago, employs over
130,000 people in the Los Angeles area and 60,000 each in San Francisco and New York.

The continuing appeal of cities to the young, educated, and adventuresome may be the
critical factor behind the clustering of multimedia in urban districts such as Los
Angeles' westside, Lower Manhattan, or San Francisco's "South of Market." Although
different and highly competitive, each of these hubs share a common sensibility with
respect to seeking out the urban creative edge, despite the admitted problems associated
with city life. As one "South of Market" resident put it:

There's the taxes, high rents, city controls and lack of support. But we all stay
because of the creative environment. The cool air rolls in and chills our bones and
keeps the blood flowing.